Alexander Trowbridge, 76, Ex-Secretary of Commerce, Dies

Alexander B. Trowbridge, a commerce secretary in the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, a former president of the National Association of Manufacturers and a longtime member of the Washington establishment, died yesterday at his home in Washington. He was 76.

The cause of death was dementia with Lewy disease, his family said.

Mr. Trowbridge's role in government and politics was not ordained. He was a young executive with a promising career in the oil industry in 1965 when he was offered the post of assistant commerce secretary in an agency that had lost much luster and seemed headed to merge with the Labor Department.

As assistant secretary for domestic and international business and then as acting secretary, Mr. Trowbridge traveled widely to promote commercial interests and, by many accounts, raised department morale.

Becoming secretary in June 1967 made him at 36 the youngest member of Johnson's cabinet and the youngest chief in the history of the Commerce Department.

The department took part in domestic social programs. In one, Mr. Trowbridge was in charge of drawing up projects to create jobs for the hard-core unemployed.

The lingering effects of a heart attack prompted him to resign in 1968, but he recovered and months later was named president of the American Management Association, the executive development and training organization. He quit over a policy disagreement and, in 1970, took over as president of the National Industrial Conference Board, the business research organization now known as the Conference Board.

Mr. Trowbridge became vice chairman of Allied Chemical in 1976, when a scandal erupted over dumped pollutants. At issue was the handling and disposal of Kepone, an insecticide banned after it contaminated the James River in Virginia. Mr. Trowbridge helped work out a settlement. Allied agreed to compensate the affected river users and accept responsibility for the cleanup.

By 1980, the Environmental Protection Agency cited that response as a model for industry.

A member of many corporate boards, Mr. Trowbridge joined that of the National Association of Manufacturers in 1978 and became president in 1980. He became the spokesman and chief lobbyist for the largest and most influential industrial trade organization in the country.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

Alexander Buel Trowbridge, known as Sandy, was born in Englewood, N.J., the son of an academic and grandson of an architect, both his namesakes. He graduated from Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts in 1947 and Princeton in 1951. He was a Marine officer and combat platoon leader in the Korean War, earning a Bronze Star.

After starting his career with Caltex Petroleum and Esso Standard Oil in Panama and El Salvador, Mr. Trowbridge became president of Esso Standard Puerto Rico in 1965. He was sitting in his office in San Juan when he received the call from the White House. President Johnson's talent scout, the chairman of the Civil Service Commission, had pulled Mr. Trowbridge's name from a file of 20,000 potential appointees and asked whether he was interested in working in Washington. After much thought, Mr. Trowbridge said later, he agreed that he was, and the job of assistant secretary was his.

Long active in Democratic Party affairs, he had advisory roles in successive administrations, including Republican ones. He was a Democratic member of President Richard M. Nixon's National Commission on Social Security, headed by Alan Greenspan, and was influential in its recommendation in 1983 to maintain the basic structure and reject suggestions that the program be voluntary or geared to individuals' needs.

He was on the first Bush administration's seven-member Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission in 1991 but was criticized for his ties to contractors servicing the bases and resigned from the panel before its final report.

After he retired from the manufacturers' association in 1990, he set up a consulting firm in Washington, Trowbridge Partners, and operated it until about two years ago.

Surviving are his wife of 25 years, Eleanor Hutzler Trowbridge; two sons and a daughter from his earlier marriage, Stephen, of Dallas; Corrin, of Redwood City, Calif.; and Kimberly Parent of Greenwich, Conn.; a stepdaughter, Barbara Verdaguer of Mousterlin, France; a stepson, Charles Hutzler of Beijing; a sister, Julie Cullen of Brooklin, Me.; a stepsister, Joya Cox of McLean, Va.; and nine grandchildren. His first marriage, to Nancey Horst Trowbridge, of Kiawah Island, S.C., ended in divorce.

Correction: May 2, 2006, Tuesday An obituary on Friday about Alexander Trowbridge, a former secretary of Commerce, referred incorrectly to the president he served in the 1980's as a member of the National Commission on Social Security. It was Ronald Reagan, not Richard M. Nixon.